This paper is a summary of a poster presented at the 2016 conference of the Natural Sciences Collections Association (NatSCA). It compares two ways of looking at, and interpreting, a natural history display: the ‘Greater Koodoo’ diorama at the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH). The first is as a ‘literal’ representation of an African landscape in which animals inhabit their natural habitat, and the second is as a ‘socially constructed’ representation of the natural world that carries within it the cultural assumptions of the time and place where it was produced. In the final section, I look at other recent critical perspectives on the interpretation of diorama displays.
